


Save Room

by asbestosghost



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Check please au, M/M, Teasing, celiac Bitty, dessert angst, diabetic Jack, slightly less believable Bitty baking behavior, some possibly romantic roughhousing, there's some hospital
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-09-30 18:31:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10169213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asbestosghost/pseuds/asbestosghost
Summary: They’re both in Bitty’s bed, Jack in relentless support mode, and Bitty inconsolable. Jack kisses Bitty’s head, but the smaller boy is far too trapped in his brain to detect its gentleness. “It’s all gone now. Have you ever tasted gluten-free desserts?”Jack kisses away his tears. “I’d eat it if you made it, Bits.”“Wet sand,” he moans. “It all just falls apart without flour.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on the "gluten-free Bitty, diabetic Jack" prompt on @shitty-check-please-au's tumblr, submitted by @61below. I thought it wasn't so shitty, and actually found it to be a pretty neat way to explore their characters! This is an AU that diverges from the plot earlier in the spring semester, before Jack graduates. Enjoy the dessert angst~

It was a hard road for both of them, but definitely tougher on Bitty than Jack. Jack would probably eat garbage without complaining if his coaches told him to, but Bitty… he felt responsible. Still feels that way, no matter how much Jack told him type 1 is usually genetic - it’s his pancreas, possibly even his parents, but not the pie.

The whole team found out before Jack. He had mentioned having trouble breathing earlier that day, and Ransom had noticed he smelled sweet (chalked it up to pie), but it wasn’t until Jack collapsed unexpectedly on the ice that they put two and two together. Full-blown DKA was the worst symptom of type 1 diabetes, but there it was, and there they were, hauling him into Holster’s car like idiots because the hospital was close enough that they thought they’d beat an ambulance. Bitty cried the entire time, some thick voice in the back of his head repeating over and over again, _You did this. You did this to him._

Even after the doctors told him he wasn’t the cause, Bitty still stayed at the hospital until Jack woke up three days later. When his eyes finally started to focus, Bittle was the first thing he saw - crumpled into a plastic chair, static splaying his hair all over the armrest, uncomfortably asleep. Eric seemed to feel the attention and rustled awake, going from grumpy to guilty in the time it took him to lock eyes with Jack. He enters new levels of ugly cry, still so convinced it’s his fault that he doesn’t even care about how he instantly goes to hold Jack’s hand. It’s sweet, it’s overwhelming, it’s almost a little ridiculous.

“This beats the last time I woke up in a hospital bed,” Jack croaks, cracking a weak smile. He rubs his thumb over Bitty’s palm, and it seems to calm the golden boy down. Bitty leans his forehead on their together-fist, and his sobs quiet into shuddering breaths, then even out to long, meditative breezes over Jack’s knuckles.

“Lord,” he says quietly, a small laugh trembling up his exhausted diaphragm, “save me from this idiot.”

It takes a week for Jack to get the all-clear to leave the hospital, with a bag full of pamphlets and an insulin pump attached to his stomach. He and Bitty start dating a week after that.

* * *

Bitty slows down on baking. While his brain understands that Jack is self-control world champion and _I did not give him diabetes_ , he can’t find a way to forgive himself. It doesn’t make sense - of course it doesn’t. But he goes outside his recipes, and it lets him forget. He starts using darker chocolate, indulges in the savory, hunts down non-American desserts, anything to try and cut back on sugar. (Except artificial sweeteners. Bitty's dedicated, but he's no masochist.)

While Jack appreciates the gesture, he can’t help but notice how tired Bitty looks. The purplish shadow under his eyes seems to get darker every week. During checking practice, it takes less and less force to push him into the boards—he peeks at the scale afterwards, and echoes Bitty’s worried face. “Ten pounds lighter,” he murmurs, and with resignation he hopes aloud that it’s just that he’s baking less.

But then Jack comes home early from class once, and hears Bittle groaning from upstairs. He tracks down his voice—he’s in the bathroom, and he sounds like he’s in real pain. And the _smell_.

“Jesus, Bits, what did you eat?”

He gets a groan in response. “Pie,” he moans. “Just a little pie, and then this.” Jack can make out the telltale whimpers of Bitty crying; he leans on the bathroom door, despite the smell (beyond asparagus; beyond wine hangover; Jack had never before undergone such an assault). “As if it couldn’t get any worse. I thought it would be done by now…”

Jack’s attention spikes. “Thought what would be done?”

“It’s… it’s nothing, sweetheart, you don’t need to stay here, please…”

“Bits.” He hears a sigh; _defeat is what saves him_ , Jack thinks. “Thought _what_ would be done.”

“I, um…” Starts talking, stops, starts again. “Diarrhea?” he squeaks, embarrassed. “It’s been a week and a half.”

Jack starts dialing his doctor. “Is your insurance card in your wallet?”

“Jack, no!”

“I’m taking you to the hospital. I’ll pick up your co-pay. This isn’t normal,” he says, wandering into Bitty’s room to grab his coat.

An hour later, they’re in the doctor’s office. Jack’s there when the doctor does the physical, when Bitty rattles off his symptoms, trying to laugh through pain so it looks normal. He’s holding Bitty’s hand when they head downstairs to the lab for blood work, and keeps him distracted while the nurse fills three vials from Bitty’s arm. He’s there when the call comes, when Bitty’s face goes white and he stumbles through scheduling an endoscopy. Jack takes him to the hospital for the biopsy, flips through an issue of HGTV without reading it in the waiting room, drives them home, keeps Bitty company while the sedatives wear off.

And when that last call comes, Jack’s not there. He gets a text from Bitty mid-class, and his mind blanks for the rest of the lecture.

_They said I have celiac disease._

* * *

They’re both in Bitty’s bed, Jack in relentless support mode, and Bitty inconsolable. Jack kisses Bitty’s head, but the smaller boy is far too trapped in his brain to detect its gentleness. “It’s all gone now. Have you ever tasted gluten-free desserts?”

Jack kisses away his tears. “I’d eat it if you made it, Bits.”

“ _Wet sand,_ ” he moans. “It all just falls apart without flour.” He covers his eyes to try and hold back a new wave of tears. Eric gets that he might be overreacting—bodies are weird, it’s probably genetic, he knows—but it just makes him feel worse about the pie complex he gave himself after Jack’s coma.

Jack just holds him tighter, kissing random spots all over his face. “Put it in perspective. If you hadn’t given me diabetes”—he has to pause to wrestle Bittle, who just belted an incredulous WHAT right in Jack’s face and is definitely attempting to illegally exit this cuddle—“with your dangerous, sugary pies, I wouldn’t be here right now.” He has to pin Bitty’s wrists to the bed to get a good look at his face. “ _We_ wouldn’t be here right now. Hell, I could be on some other team, or not in college. It could have happened anywhere. I could have died.”

“Mr. Zimmerman, you are in _so_ much trouble when I get my hands back—“

“And maybe you have to give up wheat flour, but at least you’ve got me, eh?” he says, kissing a soft line down his neck. Bitty reluctantly lets him lace their fingers together, the flesh willing, but the spirit all full of fight.

“And _maybe_ we can go back to the doctor and he’ll let me trade you back in for some, for all the good it does me!” he shouts, high-pitched and trying (and failing) not to smile. He bucks his head up far enough to grab Jack’s lower lip with his teeth, and drags him into kissing range as he slowly leans back onto the bed. Jack never thought someone could kiss _petulantly_ , but that’s the word comes to mind; every time he tries to come up for air, Bitty gets his tongue in edgewise and they start all over again. Jack doesn't really mind being silenced like this, but if getting Bitty flustered distracts him from his wheat grief, he's about ready to chirp poor Dicky within an inch of his life.

Jack presses their foreheads together hard enough to leverage his mouth away. Bitty struggles against him, trying to wedge his face sideways to get back at/to Jack's mouth, but only succeeds in making a lot of angry faces while his tongue wiggles around fruitlessly in the air. “I think I’d let you sell me for flour that doesn’t make you shit yourself. I think I love you that much,” Jack whispers.

“And maybe I should start making POLENTA with all this CORN YOU’VE GOT—”

At no point does his Georgia fury get old.

* * *

“Saints, I wish I had the room to eat it all over again,” Bitty says.

It’s a month into fall semester, and they’re celebrating both the Falcs win and their sixth-ish-month anniversary. Jack picked the place—a hellishly fancy restaurant in Providence, the kind with one prix fixe menu a night and no price listed.

The waiter comes around again. “Are we ready for the dessert course? More wine?”

Bitty looks at Jack hesitantly at the word “dessert.” Baking had to take a back seat this year anyway, but he’s lost so much steam (and so many subscribers) fighting a losing battle with gluten-free baking that he had almost given up on dessert entirely. He still bakes in the Haus, but being unable to sample anything he makes is... well, it's demoralizing. He’s hoping to get _I thought we weren’t doing this_ across with just his eyes, but Jack just smiles back… smugly?

The waiter rattles off the dessert courses as he puts each on the table—a tart, an impossibly thin pie slice, a deconstructed whatsit doused in chocolate shavings. Bitty’s working through his plan to _just_ eat the shavings, when the waiter drops the bomb. “And all gluten-free, as requested.” He turns to Jack and starts commenting on how Chef _so_ appreciates the challenge, but Bitty can’t pay attention anymore.

The tart is in front of him. The tart is in front of him, and it’s a gastrointestinal safe haven. Paradise, possibly. Bitty picks up the dessert fork. Hesitates. Dips it down—the lemon curd (he thinks?) cleaves so neatly, he almost can’t continue. Crust at the bottom—perfect resistance. Spears the sliver with his fork, remembers he’s somewhere nice, manages to keep from shoving it into his mouth. He sighs.

Jack reaches across the table and strokes his face. “Bits. Are you crying?”

The waiter smiles.

* * *

The other half of the surprise comes when Bittle remembers how to talk. “How did you… how is this _so_ …” he gestures at the plate, trying to remember any adjectives. Any descriptors that aren’t “good.”

“Good?” the waiter offers. Bitty sighs, nods, and the waiter laughs. “When you are done, you are invited back to the kitchen.”

Jack laughs as Bitty’s jaw drops, laughs a little harder when Bitty turns to give him an incredulous look that looks like _you will be dead when I am done with you_ , and turns back to the waiter. “Sorry, what?”

“Chef tested out a wide variety of different flours and flour substitutes for tonight’s menu—for the breads, the soup stock, the crust, the desserts themselves, nothing has been wheat. Your dining partner asked for this specifically, and Chef would like to show you what works, and what doesn’t.”

Bitty manages to get his jaw back in line. “Sweetheart. What did you say your name was?”

“Benjamin, sir.”

Bitty stands up, and claps his hand on the waiter’s shoulder. “Benjamin, I am going to send you _so_ much jam.” He pulls Jack up to his feet and drags “his dining partner” with him as Benjamin leads the way into the kitchen.

“How much did you spend to make this happen?” he hisses at Jack, unable to school the smile off his face.

“Thank me later,” Jack whispers, kissing Bitty’s ear. “I’ll save room.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this is a decent representation of both of these diseases! I plan to do an alternate ending that replaces the dinner scene. I like it, but I was choosing between two different ways I wanted it to play out. Constructive criticism is welcome~
> 
> (psst: I am also @asbestosghost on tumblr, let's be friends)
> 
> (edit: I readded the end notes to this chapter. I guess they were on the end of the fic before?)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Marty told me about it—he likes their muffins. I didn’t really think about it until we were out already to get coffee, but it dawned on me once we were inside. You never ask about gluten-free stuff, even in Providence.”
> 
> Bitty shrugs. “It’s usually bad. Why pay for something I know I won’t like?”
> 
> “How do you know you won’t like it if you don’t try it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The alternate ending that turned out to be longer than the entire original story. And possibly angstier?

“Oh, I keep meaning to ask. Can we go to the park later?”

“To Blackstone? Sure. I haven’t been since George took me during the Intro to Providence tour, but it’s got some good running paths.”

“Do we have to run?” Bitty says, peeling his eyes away from his phone to give Jack a measured look. “I can never keep up with you.”

Jack chuckles as he holds the door to the cafe open for Bitty. “Wear shorts just in case.”

A pout. “But I’ll get cold.”

As the door smoothes shut behind them, the small string of bells attached to it jingle along to Jack’s answering smirk. “That’s what the running’s for.”

Bitty swats Jack as they shuffle in line at the coffee shop. The decor is like industrial chic and omni-hippy had a kid and never admitted it. There’s the exposed interior brick wall with the polished concrete floor, but the pipes are all painted different colors. Spherical IKEA lights hang straight down from the ceiling, but then there’s a set of prayer flags hanging above the entryway to the kitchen, and a weathered Bob Marley statuette in the nook between the base of two cupcake displays on the counter. The effect is a little jarring, but it feels a bit more loved and lived in than the standard hard edges of “trendy” design.

It’s a weird little place, Bitty thinks, but at least the art on the walls is nice. (“Does Lardo ever have coffee shop art shows?” he wonders aloud, and immediately tweets afterwards.) He’d say the same about the way the cafe smells—because it does smell great, like fresh coffee, warm brownies, maybe the slightest hint of lavender—but he forces himself not to think about it too much.

(In his darkest moment, which he still hasn’t told Jack about, he realized he felt like Ariel from The Little Mermaid. She traded her voice for the man of her dreams, and Bitty traded his baking, only Bitty never got his baking back. It hadn’t been easy to watch the rest of the movie with Holster after the thought hit him.)

“Bits, Earth to Bitty. You can’t eat tweets,” Jack says with a smile, bumping Bitty’s arm with the oversized hard laminate menu. “Do you know what you want? They’re still serving breakfast.”

“Oh, shoot,” he says, taking the menu absently as he tries to blink his way out of the trance. His eyes keep jumping around the page; he’s reading words that look good, but he can’t seem to put them together. “What are you having?” he asks, staring uselessly at the line on the bottom: _Desserts change daily. Just ask!_

Jack puts his arm on Bitty’s bicep. It isn’t an overt gesture, but there’s just enough pressure in it that he can practically hear Jack thinking, “hey, are you okay?”, and for a split second Bitty considers telepathically replying, “I would be if I could even eat half the delicious trash on the menu, you beautiful jerk, _why are we even here—_ “

“Eggs, bacon, home fries. You want the same?”

“Um, yeah, I can eat all that,” Bitty says, trying to make it sound a little less bitter than his thoughts. He’s not sure if he succeeds.

“Good, me too.”

 _Plan_ is written all over Jack’s face and Bitty knows it, and he’s not sure he likes it. “Jack, why are we—“

“Hey, welcome to Northslope! What can I get for you guys?” interrupts the cashier. Her voice has that forced sunniness to it that comes with opening shop at 5am, like she had to smile for photos an hour ago but couldn’t get her face to stop doing it. Jack takes his hand off of Bitty’s arm, patting it twice before taking the lead at the counter. It’s a soft touch, it’s a “believe me” pat.

“Hi, uh”—Jack pauses to read her name tag—“Lynne, I’d like two breakfast specials, one sunny side up and the other scrambled, hash browns and bacon for both. And, hm… honey lavender latte? Do people usually like that?”

Lynne cheerfully leads him through their coffee orders (“it’s actually a customer favorite!”), Jack being charming as always, getting one fancy latte and one normal latte but resolutely not looking back to Bitty to ask which one he wants. Bitty’s starting to fade back into his thoughts again as she starts the “will that be everything?” bit, when Jack drops the mic, metaphorically anyway.

“Oh, so, dessert. Do you have anything gluten free?”

Bitty chokes on a sputter and barely whispers a “ _what_ ” as the cashier launches herself behind the dessert case. Bitty hadn’t been baking much that whole month—after trying and trying various gluten-free recipes online and getting burned by the flavor or texture each time he just… let it slide. As far as kitchens went, he was mostly just cooking meals at the Haus or at home; he stopped trusting restaurants after the third incident, and while the dining hall had some gluten-free options, the selection was lacking. So to have Jack try this on him, all of a sudden—it took his breath away, and maybe not in the way he wanted.

“Let’s see, we’ve got flourless brownies, I don’t know about these tarts, they’ve probably got gluten in them… actually, our special this week is something we haven’t tried before, but I think it’s just strawberries in balsamic vinegar on top of a little meringue, and those don’t have flour, right? Shoot, I just forgot the name of it, it’s a panel— pavoln—“

“A pavlova. A strawberry pavlova?” Bitty says, low in his voice. They both turn to look at him, and Lynne’s expression seems to say she wasn’t entirely aware of Bitty until that moment.

“Yeah! A pavlova. Sorry, I haven’t had many people ask about it so far, it’s our first day with it on the menu.”

Jack studies Bitty for a moment, his gaze poking around the twitch on Bitty’s lips and the downwards curl of his eyebrows. “I’ll do two of the meringues and one brownie.” He doesn’t completely smile, but his eyes narrow a little and the corners of his mouth bend up just so. “For here, yeah, thanks. Wallet’s here, one sec—”

Okay but also no no no not okay, Bitty thinks. Since when did Jack steal his secret baked goods empathy? Did he even know what a pavlova _was_ until just now _?_

Holding both cups of coffee, Bitty picks a table on the far side of the cafe, away from the counter and closer to the floor-to-ceiling storefront windows, and Jack plants the trophy-sized Mickey Mouse statuette that Lynne gave them on the edge of it. Bitty pushes both coffees toward the center of the table.

“Which one do you want? Try both, tell me what you think,” Jack says.

Bitty doesn’t look at him, and pulls the one that he thinks is the regular latte closer to him, takes a sip of it while he’s looking out the window. And he’s wrong, it’s the honey lavender one, and it’s _good._  Since he’s feeling mad at Jack, he tries to force his surprise down.

Not fast enough—Jack laughs a little, and Bitty’s face does something inscrutable. “Is it good? At some point I want to taste it, but you should have that one if you want it.”

Bitty glares at him; Jack doesn’t take the bait. He grabs the other latte, drinks a sip, and makes a face. “Way too much milk, wow. Still, coffee’s coff—”

“Why did you do that, Jack?” Bitty says, unable to keep being stoic or angry at this huge idiot for too long.

“Do what?”

Or maybe he totally can. “I haven’t cooked a damn thing sweeter than yams in a month and a half. Why the _hell_ did you get dessert?” he says, bitterly, getting quieter the more frustrated he gets. _This is not the time to cry, you are not going to cry in a stupid half-hippie cafe with a stupid name like Northslope, keep it together—_

His eyes squeezed tight, Bitty feels Jack’s hand brush his face. The newest Providence Falconer stretches his leg out so their calves rest against each other under the table. “Because you haven’t really _tried,_ Bits,” he says, softly.

 _“Haven’t—?_ _”_ He can’t keep the first few tears out, and they bust the dam open for all the others. “I tried for _weeks,_ Jack,” he whispers roughly, the effort of trying to push back an open, obvious cry making his voice come out in hiccups. “I asked mama, I asked moomaw, we tried their ideas, I tried the internet, those recipes _sucked_ —“

There’s a shuffle—Jack switches chairs to one that’s next to Bitty, holds Bitty’s hand in his own, slowly strokes it. “You did that, yeah,” he whispers back. “You gave it your all for two weeks, and it was amazing watching you, Bits. You made those binders, that whole mood board thing in your room. Gluten-free baking beat you every day, and every day you got up ready to fight it again.”

Bitty scrunches up his face, blindly pawing around with his open hand for a napkin. Jack hands him one, and Bitty gets it to his running nose immediately.

“I was so proud of you.” Bitty feels a hand on his back, making small figure-eights over his shoulder blade. “But then you gave up,”—his whole body shakes as the strain of holding it in kicks up and down his spine—“and we had to watch you try and leave a piece of yourself behind.”

“Jack,” Bitty breathes. “Please, don’t—"

Jack pulls him closer, so that Bitty’s head is resting on his collarbone. “Before Samwell, I never thought I was going to find my place again, in hockey or anywhere else.” Jack’s voice gets softer; he starts rocking back and forth, just a little, just enough. Bitty’s tears start dripping off his chin, splatter on his shirt. Every time he inhales, it comes up staccato, like a burst of smaller gasps. “Being on the team made me become—you helped me become myself. Maybe for the first time.”

He nestles his chin in Bitty’s hair. “I won’t let you lose this one, Eric.”

And Bitty, well… Bitty just cries. No wails, no moans, just a lot of tears and some sniffles as Jack rocks them both slowly, gently.

A few minutes later, someone from the kitchen comes by with their food. She gives Jack a worried look, and powerfully mouths “is he okay,” but Jack just asks her if they could please have more napkins, thanks.

Bitty snorts once she leaves the second time, a puffy stack of paper towels in her wake. “I guess we should eat?”

“No rush.”

“I’ll just keep crying into these eggs, then.”

He can feel Jack laughing as a rumble in his ear. “We can trade, if yours get soggy.” They both laugh when Bitty pinches Jack in response.

They muddle their way through their respective breakfasts. Jack tests his blood sugar partway through, and snags a sip of the honey lavender latte while Bitty isn’t looking (“I’m a little low,” “hey that’s actually pretty good,” “yeah I’ll give it back one sec,” “Bits sit down, you’re going to get your hoodie in the bacon again”). The food helps Bitty regain control of his face, and by the time dessert arrives, most of the redness on his cheeks is fading.

Bitty pecks at the meringue with his fork, trying to separate a chunk of it to eat with some of the berries. “Hey Jack,” he muses.

“Hm?”

He’s not really looking anywhere in particular, but he can’t stop the small smile on his lips. “Do you want to go for a run after this?”

Jack’s face breaks out into a rare grin, before his mouth recedes back to something warm and familiar. “Yeah, Bits,” he says. “I’d love to.”

* * *

Later, Bitty tries to make his own pavlova in Jack’s kitchen. Even though Jack has a stand mixer, which he got specifically for Bitty’s use, they decide to hand-whip all the egg whites for both the meringue and the whipped cream because it feels ceremonial somehow. It takes a surprisingly long time to make; Bitty figures the shop was making poor man’s mini-pavlovas with smaller meringues because it’d sell better than the full “pie.” Still, he has no idea how they thought it would be a smart business choice.

“Why that cafe?” Bitty asks, when they’re cleaning out the mixing bowls later.

“Marty told me about it—he likes their muffins. I didn’t really think about it until we were out already to get coffee, but it dawned on me once we were inside. You never ask about gluten-free stuff, even in Providence.”

Bitty shrugs. “It’s usually bad. Why pay for something I know I won’t like?”

“How do you know you won’t like it if you don’t try it?”

“I have! At D Hall, and Annie’s—“

“You never liked Annie’s regular desserts, either.”

Bitty bops the back of Jack’s hand with the wooden spoon he’s scrubbing off with a _hmph_.

“Just promise me you’ll ask in the future.”

“Yes, mom, thank you, okay.”

* * *

So, Bitty asks. They go out to eat once more before Bitty has to catch the train back to campus. The restaurant does have something (brownies, again), but Jack looks at him with such unabashed love and gratitude for asking that he forgets to be disappointed by the small selection.

Even if brownies are the biggest cop-out in baking. (“But they’re good, right?” “Any brainless idiot can make a brownie. Why do you think it’s ‘pot brownies’ and never ‘pot cakes?’” “Are you slut-shaming this restaurant” “Jack that’s not even what that _means_ ”)

So, it’s not amazing. But it’s a start.

* * *

Back at Samwell, Bitty does keep trying. He goes out of his way to do it, actually—the hockey team tends to go to restaurants near the Haus, but there’s a lot of small places outside the typical radius that he hasn’t ever been to before. It feels awkward at first, but after he sends pictures to Jack and gets fifteen heart emojis in response, it motivates him to keep doing it.

He doesn’t find anything worth more than a first visit until halfway through the semester.

He’d been running more often—it felt good to run with Jack in Providence, and keeping it up as a habit made him feel a little closer to his far-away Falconer. And it’s probably good for his health, he figures, plus he can get to some of these outer-limits restaurants faster this way.

Which is why, some surprisingly balmy November afternoon, he finds himself outside a battered-looking bakery. It’s in a part of Samwell-the-city that he’d yet to explore, and apart from some office buildings and the classic Dunkin’ Donuts/Subway combo, Jackson Bakery is the only place to eat. It didn’t look amazing from the outside, but Bitty knew from years in Georgia that sometimes the sorta-cruddy places have the most _amazing_ food. You just have to look past the gross ketchup bottles and badly-mopped floors.

For all the questionable cleaning habits of the storefront, the menu looked incredibly up-to-date. And, Bitty discovers, it’s joined the legion of other establishments using wheat symbols and v’s for gluten-free and vegan/vegetarian food. He’s actually got a lot of choices here - there’s sandwiches and soups he can eat, plus a host of pies and cookies that all have wheat symbols next to them. It almost seems like there’s more gluten-free dessert options than regular-flour ones, but he doesn’t have a chance to count them all because it’s his turn at the cashier. He gets a slice of mixed berry pie with a small latte, and sits down.

It only takes Bitty one bite to realize he hit the jackpot. He takes a photo of his plate and sends it to Jack immediately, follows it with a text of “IT’S GOOD,” and wolfs the rest of it down before he realizes he should have paced himself. Surprised and a bit in love, he goes up to the counter again and asks for their key lime pie, barely managing to contain his giddiness. It goes down just the same as the first one.

He’s about to order another slice of the mixed berry to take back with him, but he gets a wild hair as the older man behind the counter is boxing it up for him. “So I’m—I’m not sure if this is rude to ask, but are you Jackson?”

“Hm?” the man looks up at him. “Oh, it’s my last name. My wife and I own this bakery.” He looks like he’s in his late 40’s—just hints of gray in his hair, wrinkles only inching in on the edges of his mouth and eyes.

“Do you ever do, um…” Bitty’s nerves are sparking. He takes a deep breath to steady himself. “Internships? With the college?”

Mr. Jackson laughs. “With Sam U? Not in ages, no. You don’t have any idea the paperwork that goes into that madhouse.” He notches the hook on the box closed and hands it to Bitty. “They don’t have a culinary program, do they?” he asks, ringing up the order.

Bitty fumbles around for his card. “No, I’m doing my own major in history and food culture, though.” He swipes it through the card reader facing him, letting his eyes hang on the tiny screen because it helps him, somehow, not making eye contact. “I’m a baker, but… I haven’t… I got diagnosed as celiac a few months ago.”

The older man seems not to notice how hard it is for Bitty to admit it. “Oh, yeah, my daughter was diagnosed around your age too. Definitely did a number on our recipe cards!” he laughs.

“Oh?”

“She was working here when she found out. We switched gears pretty hard so she’d have something she could eat while she was still around to help, then that whole gluten free craze hit, and it’s been good for business, so we kept it up.”

“Oh,” Bitty says, “well that’s—“

“Did you want to work here or somethin’? We’re usually fine, but Martha may appreciate an extra hand.”

The thought smacks Bitty in the face. His brain had wanted to follow up with “actually can you just give me the recipe,” but this was something he’d never considered. Could he handle a job right now, given that they were mid-season? “I don’t know if I could do start now, but… maybe next semester? It’s just… this is the first pie I’ve eaten in.” He has to stop as he realizes. “Three months. I haven’t been able to make or get anything like this in three months.” Bitty’s eyes go wide—had it really been that long?

“Let me see here…” Mr. Jackson roots around behind the counter for a second, and finds his stack of business cards. He turns one over, and starts scribbling on the back of it. “Okay. So here’s the deal. This is…” he scratches out some numbers, rewrites measurements. “This is the basic version of the pie you’ve got in that box. If you can bring one back that tastes the same or better than the one you bought, I’ll consider setting something up with the school for the first time in… god, Martha, what’s it been? Ten years?”

Bitty hears a shout of “eight!” come back from the kitchen.

He doesn’t explode when Mr. Jackson pushes the business card over to him—no, he takes it, thanks him profusely, stuttering the whole way through, and heads out the door. He doesn’t run back to the Haus, so that the pie doesn’t get kicked around the box, so it takes him about an hour to make it back to campus. Box in hand, he stops by the fancy health food grocery south of campus to pick up some ingredients from the card he doesn’t own or recognize.

When Bitty gets back to the Haus, he’s still a bit dazed. He eats a couple bites of the mixed berry, stares at the recipe card, piles everything he needs up on the kitchen table. He drinks a big glass of water, takes a lot of deep breaths. He looks at his phone, where Jack sent a battery of responses—“where was it? Are you going to go back?”—and then flips to Twitter.

He tweets—“I think I’m going to be okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The main reason for wanting the second ending: while I liked Jack being able to surprise him, I think all these characters are at their best when they're doing something about their own happiness. Bitty's not always brave, so Jack's insistence is helpful, but ultimately I wanted Bitty to be the one that got himself out of his funk. :) As before, constructive criticism is welcome (I'm probably missing a ton of details on the pavlovas, I just know they're time-consuming)
> 
> let's be [tumblchums](asbestosghost.tumblr.com)
> 
> (edits: changed a few verb tenses and fixed the extra space around some of the italics. There's some other small changes to get rid of run-ons and whatnot, but nothing huge)


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